Just as we draw pictures to examine, explore, understand, or explain things, and just as we write poems to examine, explore, understand, or explain feelings, so we create games to examine, explore, understand, or explain dynamic systems.

Sketch the line at the RMV and you learn something about what it is; write a poem about the line at the RMV and you learn something about how it feels; design a game about the line at the RMV and you learn something about how it works.

I have kind of a lot to say about some of our games - games that Meg and I have designed, games that our friends have designed. What I want to say, follows from this idea of Anna's, so I'm starting here.

But even more, I think that this idea of Anna's is important and good, and I recommend her book. She says that we should all design games, basically all the time, basically whenever we meet a dynamic system and we want to tell someone else about it or understand it better than we do.

Over at his Patreon, Ron Edwards has just released the very first playtest/notes document for Vigil [patrons only], a superhero game he's working on. I got to try it out at GenCon, and holy mac am I excited for it.

In full, sober honesty, I've never once actually cared about a superhero before now.

Here's the deal: we sit down and we choose something that we all honestly hate, in real life. In our game, it was debt used as an instrument of violent control. Which seems a little abstract when I write it out, but you should just feel my blood boiling over here.

Then we create our characters. Before we start, as an absolute given, we know two things about them:

First, they have broken the law and will break the law to fight debt as an instrument of violent control. Given.

Second, they're living a double life: a workaday life and a vigilante life. Given.

So here's me, and I'm like, you are TOO GODDAMN RIGHT I've broken the law and will keep breaking the law to fight debt as an instrument of violent control! And I have this rising enraged coil of light inside me, and a few minutes later I have this character I can channel it into. I'm white-knuckled and grinning.

Anyhow, Ron's got a ton of work to put into this game still, and I want him to have the time and space to do it, BADLY, and we all have this grinding erosion of time and space we have to contend with all the time. Back his Patreon if you can!